President

Since August 1985, Ralph E. Grossi has served as president of American Farmland Trust (AFT). During his tenure, AFT has become the leading national non-profit organization focused on farmland protection, having grown from two offices and six staff in 1985 to ten offices with 55 staff across the country today. Grossi personally is leading American Farmland Trust’s campaign to reform U.S. farm policy to strengthen American agriculture and vastly increase the public benefits from federal farm policies.

Grossi, a third-generation Marin County, Calif. farmer, graduated from California Polytechnic State University in 1971, and since then has been managing partner of Marindale Ranch, a family partnership that has been in the dairy and beef business for more than eighty years, spanning four generations. He holds a number of national awards in his field, including the 1976 Outstanding Young Farmer and Rancher of the California Farm Bureau Federation, the 1985 Feinstone Environmental Award and the 2002 Progressive Farmer Man of the Year in Service to Agriculture.

Grossi was a co-founder and chairman of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which protects Marin County, Calif. agricultural land by acquisition of conservation easements. From 1979 to 1981, he served as president of Marin County Farm Bureau and from 1980 until he became president, as a member of AFT’s Board of Directors.

He is currently serving as chairman of the executive committee of Smart Growth America, a coalition of national and regional organizations, and serves on the boards of directors of the Charles Valentine Riley Memorial Foundation and the Natural Resources Council of America. Additionally, he serves on the advisory board of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, on the University of California President’s Advisory Commission on Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education.

He has also served on the National Commission on Non-Point Source Pollution, the Maryland Greenways Commission, the California Williamson Act Task Force, the California Agricultural Water Problems Advisory Committee, the University of California Agricultural Issues Center, the Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture Advisory Board, Pennsylvania’s 21st Century Commission on the Environment, the California Polytechnic University School of Agriculture Advisory Board, the California Holstein Association Board of Directors, and as a deacon of the First Presbyterian Church of Novato, CA.

Grossi and his wife, the former Judy Lamb, live in Rockville, Maryland. They have three adult daughters.